What We Read This Week

We bring you interesting stories from around the web. Here’s what caught our eye this week!

LIFE

Top 5 Summer Connection Ideas for Kids (Social Distancing Edition)

Summer is typically a great time for churches to connect with families in their community by providing fun opportunities for children like Vacation Bible School, Day Camps, Movie Nights, and more. But this summer is different. COVID-19 has shut down much of what we know as “typical.” Read Full Article

From Church Juice

CULTURE

Forgive Like a Dog

When our kids turned into teenagers, we wanted to hear the pitter patter of little feet once again. So we got a dog. They’re cheaper and they come with more feet. Now if you’re not a dog person, I forgive you, but if you are, you know that there’s nothing more endearing than a dog’s capacity to forgive and forget. One evening, I noticed our pup Mojo sitting by her empty dog dish staring at me, modeling two divine attributes: patience and hope. I finally loaded her dish to the brim, and she began frantically wagging her tail. All was forgiven and forgotten. Read Full Article

From Light Magazine

LIFE

Keeping Children Safe in a Virtual World

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, churches and schools across the country closed their buildings this spring and pivoted to an environment of virtual learning. Now, the social impacts of COVID-19 are likely to carry on through the summer.

That means summer kids’ programs may look different this year. Just as hands-on classroom instruction was replaced by digital learning tools during the school year, summer programs may need to adopt similar tactics. Read Full Article

From Network

FAITH

The Mystery and the Ordinary

I remember it like yesterday. During the spring break in 1999 my wife and I decided to visit my father, Gail Owens Ingram. Dad lived in deliberate simplicity in the high desert surrounding Joshua Tree, California. Our first day ended in Redding, California some six hundred miles south on Interstate 5 from our home in Tacoma, Washington. I had just turned sixty the previous week, and when I called him to keep him posted on our progress he teased me about turning into an old man. “You think that’s bad,” I said, “How does it feel to have a sixty-year-old kid.” We laughed and then he told me to drive carefully. Read Full Article

From The World is About to Turn